MacInsiders Terms Of Service

Notice: The views and opinions expressed in MacInsiders are strictly those of the student(s) who authored the content. The contents of MacInsiders have not been reviewed or approved by McMaster University or the MSU (McMaster Students Union). All articles and discussion posts on MacInsiders are 'unofficial' and it is therefore always recommended that you visit the official McMaster website for the most accurate up-to-date information.



MacInsiders ("we" or "us") is an online community for McMaster University undergraduate students. We provide news, information, discussion boards, services, entertainment, and tools for students to use throughout their university life as well as events held on or off campus for our members. MacInsiders is a division of Fullerton Media Inc. located at 32-115 King Street East, Hamilton, Ontario, L8N 1A9. The MacInsiders service and network (collectively, "MacInsiders", "the Service", "the Site", "the Website", "MI") is run and managed by Fullerton Media Inc. The forums are moderated by a group of McMaster University students and alumni (collectively, "staff", "moderators", or "mods").

By accessing or using our web site at www.macinsiders.com (the "Site"), you (the "User") signify that you have read, understand and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use ("Terms of Use" or "Agreement"), whether or not you are a registered member of MacInsiders. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice. If we do this, we will post the changes to these Terms of Use on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the date these terms were last revised. Your continued use of the Service or the Site after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms of Use. If you do not agree to abide by these or any future Terms of Use, do not use or access (or continue to use or access) the Service or the Site. It is your responsibility to regularly check the Site to determine if there have been changes to these Terms of Use and to review such changes. USING THIS WEBSITE INDICATES THAT YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS, DO NOT USE THE SERVICE OR SITE. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY AS THEY CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS, REMEDIES, OBLIGATIONS, VARIOUS LIMITATIONS AND EXCLUSIONS. You can reach us by email at [email protected]

1. Our Free Service
MacInsiders is a free service. We only require that you follow these terms and conditions as you use our site. You may register to be a User on our Service, which will give you additional benefits such as creating a profile, posting in our many discussion boards, and viewing information about other members. Some areas of our site are viewable to guests and unregistered users, but their abilities are limited. If you do register as an official user of the Site, you may not authorize anyone else to use MacInsiders with your account or password. You may communicate with other individuals through MacInsiders, use our services and tools, or participate in promotions. We are not responsible or liable for anything related to these activities because you communicate and participate in such activities at your own risk.

2. Warranties
We provide MacInsiders "as is," without warranties of any kind (including the implied warranties of any kind (including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement), unless such warranties cannot be legally excluded. This means that you use MacInsiders at your own risk and we are not promising that you will obtain any specified type of information or any minimum level of service.

3. Limitation of Liability
You agree that we, and those parties that help us to create, maintain or deliver MacInsiders content, are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages (including for example, lost profits and damages from loss of use) resulting from using MacInsiders, unless the law requires us to be liable for such damages. You agree to assume all risk and liability arising from the use of our online services, including the risk of breach in the security of our system. If your information is stolen as the result of a breach in our system, or items meant to be private, such as private messages and private journal entries, somehow become public, this is part of the inherent risk you take in using our services. On the other hand, if you fail to follow these terms at any time, we can immediately stop you from ever using MacInsiders again and you will be responsible for any damages that we may suffer.

4. MacInsiders Content
Except for items that you have marked as private or confidential, anytime you send us anything and specify it as publicly available (pictures, graphics, information, articles, postings, or data, all of which we will generally refer to as "content") you are giving us the right to edit, duplicate, and/or delete it. If we decide to use your content for website promotions, we will notify you and ask your permission first. If you send us content, it is your responsibility to make sure that you have permission to use it and to send it to us so that we can use it. You can continue to use the content even after you send it to us, so long as you either own the content yourself or the person owning the content gave you the right to use it.

With the exception of email to us that you have marked as private or confidential, you should consider everything posted to MacInsiders as public information. The content of chats, discussions, message boards, bulletin boards, private messages, marketplace postings, calendars, and forums is not endorsed by MacInsiders and we are not responsible for its accuracy. We reserve the right to screen all postings and to monitor all chat discussions, although we are not obligated to do so. We have the right to remove any or all content we receive from users of MacInsiders. We are not responsible for any material on the site that you might find objectionable.

MacInsiders may provide you with links to other sites. We are not responsible for the information or services provided by those sites and the fact that we provided you with a link to them does not mean that we endorse the site or the information or services provided by the site.

5. Conduct on our Site
By registering and participating in discussions on MacInsiders, which includes but is not limited to, posting new threads or replying to existing threads on any of the MacInsiders forums or posting messages on the MacInsiders Chatroom, you must agree to our Code Of Conduct.

The MacInsider forums are to be used for informative and constructive discussion. All members must maintain a positive and inviting discussion environment that encourages conversation and upholds the Code Of Conduct

You, as a user of MacInsiders, maintain full liability for your actions, behaviour, and conduct while on MacInsiders. We retain the right to hide, modify, edit or delete in part or whole, any of the content that is published, displayed or distributed on the Service. We reserve the right to terminate your account at anytime and for any reason without notice.

Any posts in the MacInsiders forums (new threads or replies), or messages in the MacInsiders Chatroom that do not follow the Code of Conduct or are found to be questionable by MacInsiders staff are subject to moderation. Moderation can include editing part or all of the message contained within the forum post in order to make it comply with our Code of Conduct, or deleting the post in part or whole.

Administrators, moderators and other staff are assigned the task of upholding the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is subject to change without notice, and it is recommended that you periodically review the Code of Conduct from time to time in order to keep current.

Freedom of speech
You understand that although the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights guarantees freedom of public speech for citizens of their states and countries, this website is not a UN country, and the behaviors and activities of members of this privately owned website are governed by our Code of Conduct and this Terms Of Service agreement.

6. User Accounts
All users must follow the following policies and procedures regarding their MacInsiders account:

6.1) Age
All persons who utilize this website must be 13 and older. If you are under 13, please come back to visit us at a later date. Minors are encouraged to exercise caution when using forums and chats due to their unpredictable nature.

6.2) Username and Profile Information
If any member of the staff feels that your Username is inappropriate, it can be deleted immediately without warning. Please keep your Username clean.
Your profile information must be kept accurate and up-to-date at all times. All required information must be filled in such as first name, faculty, etc. Keep in mind that if you do not wish to share your last name, you can put "n/a" in that input box. If moderators or other members find that your profile information looks suspicious or is deemed inaccurate by MacInsiders staff, it will be reported to Administration in which case your account will be set to 'limited' mode where your abilities on the website will be highly restricted until you update your profile information. You will be notified when this happens via Private Message. If your profile information is not updated within 48 hours and you have not contacted or replied to Administration within that time period, MacInsiders reserves the right to terminate your account.

6.3) Disabling Your Account
To request your account be disabled, e-mail [email protected] and we will process your request as soon as possible.

7. Proxy Servers
The use of proxy servers on our site is prohibited. If you use a proxy server to mask your identity and cause any sort of trouble on our site, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be contacted and made aware of your actions. In addition, virtually all ISPs have in their user agreement that the use of proxy servers is prohibited.

8. Duplicate Accounts
Under no circumstances whatsoever are duplicate/additional accounts allowed. You are allowed one account per lifetime. If you are in a situation where you are going to be sharing an IP address with other (real) people (housemates/family members, etc.), please let us know before we catch you. People using the same IP address will be seen as a duplicate/fake account. Duplicate accounts will be banned. If your first account with us was banned, it was done so for a reason and creating a new account to circumvent a ban is strictly forbidden.


9. Privacy
It is strongly recommended that you follow common sense in the line of protecting your privacy. Remember not to give out your address, telephone number, social security number, credit card or other personal information to strangers. The identity to the person you are giving this information to is unknown. It is possible for users of MacInsiders who have met each other online to meet each other offline. We encourage people to do so, but if you ever meet somebody offline, be VERY careful. Get to know them as well as possible before meeting offline. Make sure to meet in a very public place like the food court of a mall. Tell your family and friends beforehand where you will be and have a cell phone with you in case of emergencies. We also highly recommend that you do not meet anybody outside of your age range unless a large number of people from the site are getting together. Remember that there is safety in numbers, so be very careful about meeting somebody alone.

The MacInsiders Privacy Policy can be found here.

9.1) Under the Age of 13
MacInsiders does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register on MacInsiders or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on MacInsiders. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at [email protected].

9.2) Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18
We recommend that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.

10. Account Termination
MacInsiders may terminate your membership, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on MacInsiders and/or prohibit you from using or accessing MacInsiders for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice, including without limitation if it believes that you are under 13, or not a student attending McMaster University. Due to the nature of the Service including discussion boards, you may request your MacInsiders account be disabled which will effectively hide your profile information from other users and no longer allow you to login to the Service or the Site, however certain data contributed to the Service or Site such as your discussion board posts and/or threads will remain intact and visible to users as to not disrupt or terminate ongoing and/or archived discussions or information. To request your account be disabled, e-mail [email protected].

11. Disclaimer
The views and actions of this website in no way reflect the views of MSU Incorporated or McMaster University.

12. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold MacInsiders, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and each of their administrators, directors, officers, agents, contractors, partners and employees, harmless from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney's fees, arising out of or in connection with any User Content, any Third Party Applications, Software or Content you post or share on or through the Site, your use of the Service or the Site, your conduct in connection with the Service or the Site or with other users of the Service or the Site, or any violation of this Agreement or of any law or the rights of any third party.

11. Copyright
We either own everything on this site or have permission to use it. You are not allowed to copy or retransmit anything from our site without MacInsiders' express written permission. If the material is owned or copyrighted by someone else, you must have the copyright owner's permission to use it. You also are not allowed to transmit to MacInsiders any material that you do not own or do not have permission to use. Violating this policy could result in civil or criminal penalties.

MacInsiders is not responsible for the content that is placed on the website by its users. However, content placed on the site by users or by MacInsiders at the request of a user, becomes the property of MacInsiders. If content is found to be breaking this rule, please contact MacInsiders at [email protected] and the material will be removed by request.